Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"

Wacky ideas don't get wackier than the one behind The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, originally a graphic novel co-written by Alan Moore, who brought us From Hell. This is a similar Victorian counter-factual adventure, or make that counter-fictional adventure. It's 1899; an evil kingpin called Fantom is stirring up trouble, so an A-Team of super good-guys muster to defeat him.
Executive producer Sean Connery plays Allan Quatermain from Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines; there's Mina Harker from Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jules Verne's Captain Nemo, RL Stevenson's Dr Jekyll, Mark Twain's grown-up Tom Sawyer, Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray and Rodney Skinner, a new "sequelised" character from HG Wells' The Invisible Man - the original presumably being the only one not yet quite out of copyright. Vampiress Mina is allowed to swoop around biting people, though apparently without turning them into vampires too; Mr Hyde is a bizarrely bulbous and non-scary Hulk, to distinguish him from the essentially similar Dorian Gray who is given the extra superpower of indestructibility.
It's just so silly you have to like it. Sort of. But once the novelty wears off, you are left with a very over-egged pudding low on real thrills. Shekhar Kapur's dull Four Feathers and Simon Wells' ho-hum Time Machine shows that doing Victoriana straight is a stretch for Hollywood. But Alan Moore's funky pre-postmodern fantasies aren't working too well either.



bizarrely - w sposób dziwaczny, groteskowy

bulbous - bulwiasty, cebulkowaty, o kształcie bańki

counter-factual - „przeciwfaktyczny”, niezgodny z rzeczywistością, nierzeczywisty

counter-fictional - “przeciwfikcyjny, niefikcyjny

funky - rytmiczny, pot. fajny

ho-hum - so lacking in interest as to cause mental weariness , skrajnie nużący, nudny

indestructibility - niezniszczalność

kingpin - szef, szycha

low on real thrills - ubogi w doznania, nie dostarczający doznań

muster - zbiórka, przegląd, zgromadzenie

novelty - nowość, innowacja, nowatorstwo, nowinka

over-egged pudding - pudding ze zbyt wielu jaj, przen: przesada

presumably - przypuszczalnie, prawdopodobnie

”sequelised” - neologizm, od słowa “sequel” czyli kontynuacja (np.filmu)

to stir up - wzbudzać, wzburzać

stretch - obszar, odcinek

to swoop - obniżać gwałtownie lot, nurkować, pikować, robić obławę

wacky - dziwaczny, ekscentryczny

to wear off - zanikać, ustępować


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